The AAUW La Mesa Branch Digital Archive preserves the organization’s history and community impact from 1946 to the present. The collection features two primary formats: high-resolution digitized scrapbooks that provide a visual narrative of branch activities and news clippings, and a series of searchable PDF member directories (yearbooks). These records contain essential institutional data, including leadership lists, committee appointments, programmatic schedules, and membership rosters. Together, these materials serve as a vital resource for exploring local history and the professional and civic contributions of the La Mesa branch over eight decades. In the first phase of this work, we have digitzed, archived, and curated all of the materials covering the first ten years of the chapter, between 1946 and 1956.
Context Note
We note that these are primary historical records from a transformation era in American history. These records contain some content that is offensive or discriminatory. Specifically, there are both overtly and covertly racist and sexist terms, figures of speech, and conventions in these records. While we do not condone or wish to perpetuate past discriminatory mores, we have chosen to leave these records intact with no redaction in the interest of maintaining a true and accurate historical record, that depicts all aspects of the time period, whether joyful or painful. We make this statement to ensure all visitors are cognizant of what may be contained in these archives.
The AAUW La Mesa Chapter
In 1881, seventeen women, led by Marion Talbot and Ellen Swallow Richards, met in Boston to discuss the equal treatment of women and the advancement of opportunities to pursue higher education and careers. The following January 14, 1882, the initial group added an additional fifty women and formed the American Collegiate Association (ACA). The ACA established local branches across the United States and commissioned research to document women’s abilities and equal value in the workplace. In 1921, the ACA merged with the Southern Association of College Women to form the American Association of University Women (AAUW). At this time there were thirteen active branches of the organization, including the San Diego Branch that was founded in 1911.
Many of the local San Diego area branches of the AAUW grew out from the original San Diego organization, including the La Mesa Division which was convened on May 1, 1946. What started as a Bridge Party to raise funds for a new San Diego Branch clubhouse grew into a separate AAUW La Mesa Branch on May 3, 1951. The La Mesa Branch merged with the El Cajon Branch in the mid-1990s and the organization has continued to operation as the AAUW La Mesa-El Cajon (CA) Branch since then.
Throughout its history the organization has engaged in a wide variety of activities to support and promote opportunities for women in higher education and in the workplace. They sponsor scholarships for women, fund a camp for middle school girls to engage with science, technology, engineering, and math, and hold an essay contest during Women’s History Month.
Access the complete scope and finding aid for the collections here. (PDF opens in a new tab).
The CHET Project
The Community Heritage Empowerment Toolkit, or CHET, is a collaborative public humanities project that aims to help grassroots heritage organizations document the life histories of historically meaningful buildings using accessible, standards-based methods. Developed as a joint research group at San Diego State University and the University of Central Florida, the project works directly with community partners such as the La Mesa History Center to create practical documentation workflows that support community-led preservation, local storytelling, and broader public engagement with place-based history. The SDSU College of Arts and Letters feature on the project is available here and a local television news story is available here.
La Mesa History Center and SDSU Collaboration
The ongoing collaboration between the La Mesa History Center and the SDSU Computational Archaeology Lab brings together community heritage work and university-based research to support the documentation, interpretation, and preservation of local historical resources. Through this partnership, SDSU faculty and students have worked alongside LMHC to help develop practical methods for recording community knowledge, documenting historic buildings, and creating publicly accessible heritage materials that serve both research and outreach goals. This exhibit was made possible through support from the College of Arts and Letters Community Engagement Grants program, whose funding helped advance this community-centered work.
Credits and Thanks!
We thank the CHET project team and the LMHC board and volunteers. Specifically, LMHC president Veronica Marzahl and past-president Jim Newland provided invaluable assistance, expertise, and guidance across all phases of the project, and especially with curatorial expertise and historical research. The CHET project team that developed this project was led by Dr. Isaac Ullah, and consited of SDSU Anthropology graduate students Skyler Rehbach and Michaela Langer and SDSU Anthropolog undergraduate student Erin Petersen. We also thank CHET team member Geoffery Hughes, who helped develop the ditization techniques used to record the scrapbooks and yearbooks. We thank the SDSU College of Arts and Letters who supported this project with a 2026 Community Engagement grant. Finally, we thank the AAUW La Mesa Chapter for entrusting us with their historical archives.